Mission Statement

The Centre is committed to provide quality child care services in order to support and strengthen the family unit, guided by the underlying principle that the family is the best environment for personal growth. It also provides training programs for parents in order to enable them to become more empowered individuals, and to strengthen their parenting skills.

The Service

Smartkids commenced its services in Cottonera as Smartkids Child and Family Centre in Birgu, five years ago. The service was originally offered to the families of Cottonera and Kalkara only.  Since then, the service has obtained an excellent reputation and another two centres were opened, one in B'Kara and another one in Qawra.

Smartkids child and family centre responds to the need for supporting parents in their role; especially with families becoming more 'nuclear" in nature, more women joining the workforce and with an added awareness about the need of parenting skills, together with knowledge that quality childcare is beneficial for children. The centre provides quality childcare to children between the ages of 3 months to 3yrs (and up to five years in certain circumstances).

The centre caters for all types of children and families but most especially:

- Children who due to specific family circumstances, would benefit from spending periods of time away from home.

- Children whose parents require respite.

- Children whose parents are attending family workshops offered by the centre. (These workshops are aimed at enhancing personality development and at delivering certain basic skills which might be in part or totally missing in a particular individual).

- Children of single parents, especially if these parents opt to join in family workshops, opt to take up some form of academic development; or opt to work to improve the financial situation.

- Children whose mothers need to go out to work.

- Children with developmental delay (e.g speech delays etc), who need some more time and more personalised attention before being amalgamated into mainstream kindergarten.

Aims and Objectives

- To ensure that children in need (under five years of age) gain maximum life chance benefits from learning opportunities, healthcare and social and psychological care.

- To work in partnership with parents, and provide a range of family support services tailored to the needs of the individual child and family, both within the family's own home and within the Centre and to strengthen parents' ability to cater for their children.

- To actively involve parents/carers, to work with other professionals (where or when needed) in tailoring individual packages of care for children and families.

- To be at the forefront in developing an example of best practice model for childcare practice

- To engage appropriately skilled workers and to ensure a continuous training programme to train/retrain workers.

- To work in partnership with other professionals in the childcare and family support sector.

- To monitor and evaluate the service regularly, effecting changes as necessary thus ensuring that the services are upgraded according to developments in research and feedback obtained.